Pirate Moon
by Lola Blue
Summary: Kyla has always been intirgued by the mysterious Carillo family and when her mother is offered a job nursing the sick matriarch of the family Kyla learns some shocking secrets about them and the world to which they belong. NW


Pirate Moon

By Lola Blue

Disclaimer – The Night World belongs to the wonderful LJ Smith, as do the Redferns.

**Chapter One**

Mrs Carillo. Poised, elegant, graceful. Never a hair out of place, a gentle smile always resting easily on her lips, a soothing warmth ever present in her laugh and her knowing amber colored eyes. Mrs Carillo was an easy lady to like, and yet, she was a total enigma. Kyla had lived on the same street as her for every single one of her sixteen years. She'd been in practically every single one of her son's classes in elementary school and middle school, and still continued to share some classes with him to this day. But despite all of that, Kyla could count the amount of times she had spoken to Mrs Carillo on one hand, every single memory bright and vivid, yet shockingly rare.

That was why on that day, as she and her best friend Tom were wandering through the mall just like they always did every Saturday afternoon, the second Kyla's eyes fell upon the ever mysterious Mrs Carillo entering Vance's House and Home Interiors she stopped dead in her tracks, freezing like a statue.

'Uh, Ky?' Tom asked frowning and reaching a hand up to the back of his head, giving it a bewildered scratch. 'Is there a problem?'

Kyla tightened her grip on the glazed donut she was holding, thoughtfully chewing the last bite she had taken, her eyes narrowed with scrutiny as she stared straight ahead, ignoring her friend's question.

'Ky?' he repeated, waving a hand in front of the girls face. Once again Kyla ignored him, craning her neck around him to try and get a better look at Mrs Carillo who was now stood just inside the entrance to the store, running a perfectly manicured hand up and down a long ream of a deeply crimson colored material.

Kyla stood there transfixed, the only sign that she still belonged to the land of the living and hadn't suddenly turned catatonic was the way she raised the donut she was squeezing the life out of up to her mouth and took another bite. Tom shook his head and sighed, reaching out a hand to wipe away a couple of sprinkles that clung to her bottom lip. Still she didn't react.

With another more agitated sigh, Tom absently wiped the sprinkles off his hand and onto his jeans before crossing his arms and saying in more of a demanding tone, 'Kyla!'

This time it seemed to work. Kyla blinked a couple of times, shaking a strand of her dark blonde hair out of her eyes and turning to Tom, raising her donut holding hand up towards the store Mrs Carillo was in, making a frenzied pointing gesture as she did so.

'Look,' she whispered. 'It's her.'

Tom frowned. 'Yeah, so?''

'So,' Kyla replied, still whispering. 'She's shopping. I don't think I've ever seen her out shopping.'

'Why are you whispering?' Tom asked, the frown still etched upon his face.

'Because…' Kyla trailed off. Why was she whispering? The mall was a buzz with hundreds of other different conversations, and Kyla's soft voice was a struggle to hear at the best of times, even when she wasn't whispering. Instead of answering she settled on giving Tom a casual shrug as she tried to use her tongue to dislodge some of the donut from behind the back of her teeth, attempting to appear nonchalant.

'Your little obsession with Mrs Carillo is kind of creepy Ky,' Tom said with a gentle laugh. 'Shouldn't a girl your age be obsessing over Deacon Carillo instead of his middle aged mother?'

Kyla gave her friend a dig on the arm as she headed over to a nearby cleaning attendant who was trundling along with a trash cart. She tossed the remains of her mangled donut into the cart then turned back to Tom, her argument fully formed and ready to be fired at him.

'I know the reason Deacon doesn't talk,' she said, wiping at her chin in case there were any sprinkles Tom had missed. 'He's super shy. Kind of boring too. But her? She's… intriguing.'

Tom shook his head at her and shoved his hands into his pockets, seemingly unimpressed by his friend's explanation. Kyla went on anyway. 'Don't you ever wonder about her? What she does? Like for a living, for fun, for _whatever_?'

Tom frowned again. 'No. And I don't get why_ you_ do. If you're so interested why don't you just ask Deacon?'

'I did,' Kyla replied in exasperation. 'But he just shoved a crayon up my nose. Way,_ way_ up my nose. It bled! I had to go to the nurse to get it taken out!'

Toms brown eyes lit up in recollection as he began to laugh. 'I remember that! Wasn't that in the third grade?'

Kyla nodded. 'Yeah, that was the first and last time I ever asked_ him_ a question about his family.'

'The Carillo's are secretive,' Tom said simply. 'Maybe it has something to do with all that money they have. They're easily one of the richest families in this town.'

'And how do you think they got all that money?' Kyla quipped, her face alight with curiosity. 'Mr Carillo's just a dentist.'

'Dentists can make good money,' Tom countered. 'Especially ones that do heaps of cosmetic dentistry like he does. One of my Aunts friends got her veneers done by him, said it cost her more than she cared to mention.'

'Still..' Kyla shook her head, unconvinced. She glanced back at the store Mrs Carillo had gone into, unable to see her sleek honey blonde hair or her ultra expensive looking jacket. Either she had ventured further into the store or she had left. Kyla's shoulders slumped and she couldn't help but pout slightly. Even though she only lived a few doors down from her, seeing Mrs Carillo was always like seeing a celebrity.

Later that evening when Kyla arrived home, she found her mother sat at the kitchen table, sifting through pile upon pile of final notices and credit card bills. Bessie Jamieson looked up at her daughter with a tired smile. Kyla smiled back at her mother, seeing a pretty lady with a small nervous laugh and pearly blue eyes that were pinched with tightness at the corners. The stiffness of her mothers smile gave away more than it managed to hide.

'Good day?' her mother asked, gathering up the mass of letters in front of her and rising to her feet.

Kyla nodded, taking an apple out of the fruit basket and shining it on her sleeve. 'Uh huh. You'll never believe who I saw going into Vance's House and Home Interiors.'

Her mother clutched the letters to her chest and forced a tight-lipped smile. Kyla knew better than to push her about the financial issues they were facing. Her father had died five years ago and the money he'd left to them had only sustained them for a few years. He had died of lung cancer and his death had come as no surprise. He had thought long and hard about the money he was leaving to his family and he had insisted that the bulk of it go on Kyla's education, keeping her in the private schools she had grown accustomed to, and paying for her college tuition.

It hadn't left much for anything else. The house they lived in had been given to Kyla's parents as a wedding gift by her father's grandparents before they moved to a retirement community. They had reasoned that he was going to be getting the house in their will anyway, so there was really no reason to make him wait until they died seeing as he and Bessie needed a house.

Kyla's mother had told her a few months ago that they might have to sell the house to raise funds, and her eyes had been filled with guilt and sorrow ever since. The intensity of her sadness seemed to grow every day as the inevitability of what she had suggested inched closer and closer.

'Who did you see?' Bessie asked, trying her hardest to feign interest and failing miserably.

'Mrs Carillo,' Kyla answered, setting the apple back down in the fruit basket and glancing around in search of something with more calories.

'Oh that reminds me!' her mother gasped. She dropped the pile of correspondence back down onto the kitchen table and began leafing through it once again. 'I found a hand delivered letter in the mailbox this morning and I never got around to opening it. I assumed it was from the Carillo's, it looked like their handwriting.'

'Really?' Kyla asked, forgetting all about food. Bessie nodded and continued checking the envelopes. 'How can you tell it's their handwriting?'

'It was the same handwriting that's always on their Christmas cards,' her mother replied.

Kyla hurried over to the table and began to help her mother in her search. 'This is so cool,' she breathed. 'I wonder what they want? Maybe they're inviting us to a party or something!'

'Doubtful Kyla honey,' her mother sighed. 'The Carillo's have never thrown a party.'

'There's a first time for everything,' Kyla replied, refusing to have her excitement squashed at the hands of her mother's pessimism.

'Ah, here we are,' Bessie said, singling out a crisp magnolia envelope with her name written across the front in neat cursive handwriting.

'What does it say?' Kyla asked impatiently, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

'Well let me read it and I'll tell you,' her mother snapped.

Kyla took a step back in order to give her mom some room to breathe. Obviously, she'd had a stressful day, and unlike Kyla, her spirits hadn't been lifted by the mysterious letter from the Carillo's. Fiddling anxiously with a lock of her hair, she watched as her mother tore the letter open and flipped her glasses down from their resting place on the top of her head to read what the Carillo's had written.

After a few agonizing moments her mother let out a low breath and turned her head to face Kyla, her usually placid blue eyes wide with surprise.

'What is it?' Kyla asked excitedly.

Her mother shook her head in silent disbelief, then glanced back down at the letter to confirm that what she had read was really there. 'I don't believe it.'

'What!' Kyla cried.

Bessie looked back at her daughter with the same shell-shocked wide eyes. 'They've offered me a job!'

'HUH!' Kyla lunged forward, yanking the thick slip of paper out of her mother's hands and averting her own eyes down to the delicate handwriting. Every single word, each curve and tail of every letter, was as beautiful and elegant as Mrs Carillo herself and Kyla could feel herself drifting into a daze as she read it.

It was unbelievable. The Carillo's really did want her mother to work for them. The job they were offering her was full time nurse of Mr Carillo's mother, Elizabeth Carillo. Kyla wasn't aware of the fact that the Carillo's even knew what her mothers profession was, but that was explained as she read on further into the letter and discovered that a friend of Mrs Carillo's had mentioned her mothers name after Bessie had been assigned by the nursing agency she worked for to help rehabilitate her son after he'd been in a car crash.

Kyla's eyes almost bulged out of their sockets when she read how much they were willing to pay her. 'This is amazing,' she squeaked. 'Amazing!'

Bessie reached over and took the letter off Kyla with a grim frown and a flicker of unease in her eyes. 'You have to take this job,' Kyla urged her. 'They're offering you three times the amount you get paid at the agency.'

Her mother folded up the letter and stuffed it back into the envelope. 'I don't know,' she mumbled.

'What's not to know!' Kyla exclaimed with incredulity. 'It's the perfect job! Stacks of money and it's right on your doorstep. And you don't even need an interview – they've headhunted you!'

Kyla noticed her mother swallow uneasily, a muscle in her eye twitching as she took in her daughter's words. 'I know,' she sighed. 'But I remember the family of the woman who recommended me to her.' Again she swallowed. 'They were… strange.'

'Strange?' Kyla echoed.

'Odd,' her mother continued. 'So very, very odd. I couldn't wait for the boy to hurry up and heal so I wouldn't have to work for them anymore.'

'Well what was so odd about them?' Kyla asked.

'It's hard to explain,' she replied, her frown deepening. 'They just left me feeling unsettled.'

Kyla waved a hand dismissively. She couldn't believe that one bad experience with a family who happened to know the Carillo's was actually enough to put her off the best job offer she'd had in years. Probably the best job offer she was ever likely to get from there on in. Kyla pointed this out to her mother and Bessie found herself nodding reluctantly in agreement.

'You're right,' she sighed. 'But this is a shock. I want to sleep on it before I commit to a decision.'

Kyla grinned. She knew her mother well enough to know that that meant she was going to take the job. A job with the Carillo's of all people. Giddy anticipation flowed through her. Finally she was going to get the inside scoop on the mysterious Carillo's.

Rose Carillo laid a soft pink quilt over her ailing mother in law, smoothing the imaginary wrinkles out of the silky material and patting it gently.

'Feeling better today, Beth?' Rose asked with a smile as smooth and sweet as caramel.

The old woman's sagging jaw set resolutely as she glared up at her beautiful daughter in law from her bed. The dark hollows beneath her hard gray eyes deepened as her lined face strained in anger. Rose chuckled and let one of her porcelain white hands glide along the length of the old woman's coarse gray hair as it hung loosely in unkempt tendrils down to her fragile waist.

Rose let her hand rest on the old woman's protruding hipbone for a second or two, before giving it another gentle pat. 'You really should eat, Beth. You're wasting away before all of our eyes. It makes David so sad.'

'I don't want to eat,' the old woman's voice was raspy, it's clarity hindered even more by her clenched jaw and gritted teeth.

'I'm sure you'll change your mind soon,' Rose replied airily, walking to the end of the bed and tucking the edges of the quilt under the mattress. 'I have a nurse lined up for you.'

The old woman's eyes flashed and Rose suppressed a smile as she tasted the fear rolling off the bedridden matriarch of the Carillo family.

'I don't want _anyone_ in here!' she seethed. 'Only you and David! No one else!'

'Having a nurse will do you good,' Rose replied, straightening up gracefully until her posture was once again perfect. 'I'm sure after having her in here with you for a few days your appetite will be back with a ravenous vengeance.'

Again Rose chuckled. The old woman closed her eyes, too weak to protest, filled with a quiet desperation to leap from her bed and teach the elegant vampire who stood before her a lesson in how to treat her elders. Of course Rose would never treat Elizabeth Carillo as an elder in the truest sense of the word. To her Elizabeth was just a second-class citizen – a werewolf. Rose held no respect for her mother in law and Beth knew it.

Oh yes, as a young and foolish boy David had thought that Rose was marrying him for love, that to her, he was more than a lowly wolf. And true enough he was. He was her own personal and limitless checking account. The Carillo's weren't like most other packs. They had untold fortune, an incredible birth right that had been fought for in a series of great battles centuries ago and had been held within the Carillo family vaults for all those years since.

But now Rose had joined their family. Turning her back on everything a vampire of her stature could have had she'd married into the Carillo family in search of even more. And now she had it. And she would never let it go.

Deacon Carillo was sulking. A sight to behold, really. He was the only vampire – werewolf crossbreed that Ember Thornley knew. He also happened to be one of the most screwed up people she knew which was really saying something when you considered all the whacko's she had made acquaintance with over the last sixteen years. But she wanted him anyway.

He may have been terminally angry, seriously lacking in charisma or anything even remotely resembling it. But he was a Carillo. Her mother had told her stories about the Carillo's. And it wasn't like he only had one hundred percent wolf in him. His mother had been born a Redfern – practically vampire royalty. Ember admired his mother greatly.

Rose was friends with Embers mother and it had been her who had suggested Bessie Jamieson as a good nursing candidate for her mother in law. They had hired Bessie to work as a nurse for her older brother Jaden. Jaden_ had_ been in a car accident, but being a vampire he hadn't sustained any injuries. People in the neighborhood would have been suspicious if he had been walking around all fine and dandy so soon after such a horrific accident so her mother had decided to hire a nurse just for show.

It had suited Embers parents just fine. They were often too tired or too busy to go out hunting so unwittingly Bessie had become blood on tap for the Thornley family. She never knew what was going on or what had happened, but the haunted look in her eyes every morning when she arrived at the house told of how she sensed something was not right. She never realized that there was nothing wrong with Jaden. The power of mind control. A wonderful thing.

Watching Deacon as he sat behind the wheel of his brand new Lexus, brooding silently, Ember reached over to brush a lock of his dark hair off his forehead. Instinctively Deacon hit her hand away and turned on her with a dark anger blazing in his eyes.

'Get out,' he whispered.

Ember sighed. She knew better than to argue with him when he got like this. So she was miles away from home and she would have to walk, it was no big deal. She had grown to expect this kind of treatment from Deacon. And it was the price she had to pay if she wanted to remain his best friend. In truth – his only friend.

'I'll see you tomorrow,' she said, flicking her long brown hair over her shoulder and stepping out into the cold night.

'I doubt it,' he muttered. Grabbing the door handle he slammed it shut and gunned his engine, leaving Ember to watch as he tore down the street. Being Deacon Carillo's best friend. A high price to pay. An even higher prize to be won.


End file.
